I could feel the guy across from me in the waiting room at Platte Valley staring at me, his leg twitching up and down nervously. "You're going to really like this place, man. They have the best weed in town." I hadn't even seen the herb yet, and I knew this guy needed to get out more.

I noticed the shop's ad in last week's Chronic-le, mostly because of the sketchy way they hyped "late hours" until 9 p.m. Considering state law says shops have to close by 7 p.m., I have no clue how they can offer that. Platte Valley Dispensary is upstairs from Tapas de Espana, but the sign above reads El Senor Sol Real Mexican Food. Just in case you get confused, the dispensary is behind the green door -- though you still might feel perplexed by not having to be buzzed into the shop at all. I just pushed open the door and walked in. You have to walk up a long and steep flight of green stairs to get to the shop, which would be a real bitch for patients with mobility issues to navigate.

Pass through an open doorway at the top of the stairs and you'll find the waiting room. The dispensary is painted white, with all of the trim and doors painted an unoriginal green. A few posters hung on the walls along with a flat screen tuned to some random documentary, but otherwise the place felt bare and cheap. Wafting through the wide-open door to the bud room was the strong scent of ganja. Usually, the aroma of a dispensary is a wonderful thing, but Platte Valley smelled more like wet hay. Sadly, it was a good indication of what was waiting in the jars in the back as well as the lack of security.

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At the budbar, the budtender pulled down a handful of strains for me to sniff. Each and every one was full of tiny bottom buds, which he explained was due to their weekend rush. That is understandable for a busy shop, but I have no clue why they'd been swamped after looking at and smelling their jars. They had at least four different varieties of diesel, and not a single one exuded the funky/tangy goodness they should. The OG Kush was similarly unimpressive, with no trace of the rubbery goodness a good OG should have.

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And while it's hard to judge strains based on the shake at the bottom of the jar, the actual buds I saw were unimpressive and beat up. Still, the budtender put on his best "check this out" routine, telling me how good each strain was. Maybe he should get out more, too. He did admit that one strain was too fresh and needed time to cure, but then he turned around and tried to sell it to me.

No concentrates to speak of, other than a $70 gram of hash oil that, judging by the bubbles suspended in it, needed to be purged of butane. Even then, a $70 gram is about $10 too much these days. There were a few pipes, bubblers and vaporizers in the larger cabinet, while the smaller cabinet contained candies, popcorn and other edibles. The shop doesn't take credit cards, so I had to spend a surcharge on their ATM to pull out cash for the $40 split eighth that I wasn't even that psyched about buying.

Page down for pics and strain reviews.Purple Cotton: $40/eighth Yeah, this was about as good as it got the day I was in. The budtender told me the buds were small because it was grown in organic soil, which is complete bullshit. The buds were small because the shop chose to sell larfy buds from the bottom of a jar that should have been turned into hash. The little green pellets had only a faint hint of purple and had an artificially sweet smell when broken up. No flavor or aftertaste to it, and even my non-puffing fiancé noted that it didn't smell up to my usual standard when I burned a bowl in the room. Sage and Sour $40/eighth This was the shop's most unique smelling strain, with a Kool-Aid fruit punch sweetness. But some time in a baggie left it dry and smelling more like the musty dispensary. The large, light-green bud I got looked like it needed a few more weeks under the lights to fully develop, and the lack of any noticeable amount of amber trichomes pretty much confirmed that. Ground down for a joint, the saccharine sweetness came out again and it burned smooth for being dried out. Definitely more worthwhile than the Purple Cotton, but nowhere near Charlie Sheen potency.

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